


I'll Be There For You

by alpacasandravens



Series: gotham gets hugs [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s03e05 Anything for You, Hugs, M/M, Pre-Slash, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23988787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacasandravens/pseuds/alpacasandravens
Summary: Oswald is devastated when the Red Hood gang defaces Gertrude's statue. Edward is there to calm him down.
Relationships: Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma
Series: gotham gets hugs [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1726849
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	I'll Be There For You

**Author's Note:**

> @owlxle yet another response to your singular prompt. hugs for EVERYONE  
> i admittedly did not rewatch the episode when writing this. canon dialogue is not present and i have only the vaguest idea of how the scenes went.

The world was in slow motion. Oswald couldn’t move, couldn’t think, as he watched his mother’s stone head topple from the statue’s shoulders and roll down the stairs before him. 

“You will pay for this!!” he screeched. 

The red hoods laughed. One of them shot Gertrude’s serene face once more as they left. 

Oswald sank to the ground, ignoring the pain in his leg. Today had been for his mother. Finally, he would honor her as she deserved to be honored. Those men had no right to do this! 

“I’m going to kill them,” he muttered. 

“It’s a good thing you didn’t say that too loudly,” Ed said. Ed had been far away, standing by the reporters, but now he was right next to Oswald. “Can’t have the mayor publicly making death threats!” He smiled as though he thought that was amusing. 

“Edward,” Oswald said, turning to face him, though he did not stand up to look Ed in the eye, “I will kill them. Put a bounty on their heads if we must. I want them dead!”

Ed’s expression did not change. “Come on, Oswald,” he said, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go.” 

Oswald readily agreed. 

“If they wanted to target me, why didn’t they shoot me? Why did they have to bring my mother into this?” Oswald asked as soon as he and Ed were in the car. As the mayor, they were chauffeured, but the rear seats of the car were blocked off from the driver, giving them some privacy. 

“I suspect this was not an attempt on your life but a personal attack. Likely, the gang’s leader targeted the statue to upset you, and the possibility of hearing the mayor threaten murder on television was a bonus.”

“Then they succeeded! I am very upset. My mother was a saint! And they desecrated her memory!”

Oswald always jumped straight to anger whenever he was upset, and this time was no different. Far from mourning his mother’s statue or her memory, he began thinking about the tortures he would enact on those red hoods when he found them. It was lucky that as mayor he couldn’t immediately reach for his gun, or the news cameras would have recorded something more than a death threat.

“I am sorry, Oswald. But this likely wasn’t the group’s only move.” Ed didn’t look very sorry, but Oswald knew this was because he struggled with expressing sympathy. It was far easier to show care by being useful, by preventing the next attack, than by dealing with the emotional aftermath of this one.

“I want them found before they can make it. One million dollars to anyone who brings in the red hood gang alive.”

“Alive?” 

Oswald’s lips quirked up in imitation of a smile. “I want to see them suffer.” 

To say the impromptu meeting with the families didn’t go well would be an understatement. Barbara had spent half the meeting filing her nails and ignoring him. He suspected several of Falcone’s old cronies would rather see him back in Arkham, and even Zsasz wasn’t being as loyal as he should. 

Oswald wasted a glass of frankly delicious wine when he lost his temper and threw it at the wall. Olga would give him grief for that later. She hated cleaning up broken glass, and wine stains were particularly annoying. It was a good thing he didn’t speak Russian and so couldn’t understand her complaints. 

Still, he’d gotten the word out about the bounty on the red hoods, and no one had explicitly defied his authority, so things were going as well as could be expected. He might have to terrorize some of them though. They needed to be loyal to him, and that meant a demonstration of what happened when they weren’t. 

“You have two hours before your inauguration party,” Ed said helpfully. They’d left the meeting room and were walking through the mansion in the general direction of the living room. 

“Thank you, Edward. I don’t know where I’d be without you.” 

“Still mayor,” Ed said with a wide smile. “The people love you.”

“The red hoods don’t,” Oswald scoffed. 

“The red hoods are five people. You control all the legal and illegal operations of Gotham. The people elected you by a landslide. What are the red hoods compared to that?”

“The red hoods defaced my mother’s statue! They challenged my authority!” 

“And now you’ve got the whole city looking for them. We’ll find them, Oswald.” 

Oswald stopped walking. In times like this, when Ed said such thoughtful things, Oswald wanted to confess. He wanted to tell Edward that he was the most important person in Oswald’s life, that he felt so much more for him than best friend or employee. Instead, he nodded vacantly.

“Oswald?” Ed asked. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, perfectly fine,” Oswald said, quickly removing all thoughts of confessing to Ed from his mind. “You said I had two hours before the party?”

Ed nodded. “We should leave in an hour. Wouldn’t want to be late.”

“Thank you, Edward. For all that you do.” 

“You got me out of Arkham,” Ed said quietly. “You’re my best friend. It’s the least that I can do.”

“You are the best friend I could have asked for.” Oswald ignored how much he would have liked to be able to say ‘boyfriend’ there. “And the best chief of staff.” 

Before he could talk himself out of it, Oswald reached out and hugged Ed. At first, Ed stood stock still. Oswald may as well have been hugging a wooden board. But as he started to pull away. Ed brought his arms up and around Oswald. 

“You’re going to be the best mayor Gotham has ever seen,” Ed said, arms still firmly around Oswald. “The red hoods can’t change that.” 

Oswald nodded. They would find the red hoods, and he would kill them. The statue of his mother would be fixed. Gotham was his to rule. “Only thanks to you.”

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this, drop a comment below/leave kudos! if you want to see other Gotham characters get hugs, check out the other works in this series. I'm on tumblr @alpacasandravens


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